Sorry it has been so long since our last post, things have been busy on the Home on the Highway front. When we last left you we had just entered Florida right around Thanksgiving time. We spent the holiday bouncing between our two parents houses and seeing friends anywhere and everywhere in between. Also Iceland is the best place for spending holidays. When camping around Iceland with one of our vans, you can stop by the secret lagoon in Fluðir for a discounted swim.

Beautiful Ladies, Impressive genes!

Vacation Dad! and his beautiful daughters out for a pleasure cruise on their boat.

You get two opinions of Florida, those who think it is a tropical paradise and others who think its nothing but a muggy retirement home. Like most things in life, Florida is all about the timing, and November is PRIME TIME for adventuring in our homestate. The mercury drops, humidity vanishes, bugs and tourists are banished, and we get to enjoy these pristine months in shorts and t-shirts relaxing on the beach while the rest of the country is bundled up fighting off Jack Frost. Needless to say, I love Florida.

November? Yep!

After we wrapped up Thanksgiving in Tampa with Lauren’s folks we headed down to Miami for a bit to hang out with my family. First order of business… FISHING. My crazy Uncle Wendell was happy to take the family out for a day of hunting dolphins. My Uncle is a true Old man of the Sea, not a lick of electronics to be found on the boat, no fancy GPS, no fish finder, none of the gauges actually work, hell I don’t even think there was a UHF radio on the thing.  We fish by sight, smell, and feel out here.

My brother Jonathan and Mama Dukes, 80’s stylin on the fishing trip

FISH ON!

Nice little Dolphin, To take the skunk off the boat

Laurens turn at bat

Sushi time! Blackfin on the menu

Put a few more in the boat and headed back in for dinner.

Happy Captain and Crew!

Next day we headed on down to the Florida Keys, one of my favorite places on earth. My folks have had a timeshare down in Key Largo forever and I have been exploring these mangrove waters as long as I can remember. I love it down here. Old Florida still survives in places like these.

Mom, Daddio, and yours truly.

I wanted to take Lauren down to see the Everglades, one of Florida treasures. The Everglades is a biological wonder not replicated anywhere in the entire world. “The River of Grass” is a slow moving shallow body of water which used to flow from Lake Okeechobee in Central Florida all the way on down south over the Florida peninsula out to the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately due to construction, canals, and agriculture demands we have managed to completely screw up this natural flow of water reducing the size of the everglades unique ecosystem to less than 75% of its original area. Luckily we have finally wised up and are making attempts to restore this rare habitat.

Osprey

River of Grass

The hell!? Hoodlum vultures

Anhinga

Wrapping up in the 305, We hung out with an old friend, Frank the Tank!, before we headed back up to Orlando. Great seeing you guys!

In Orlando we met up with another great friend of ours, Doug, who you might remember from our Rae Lakes Trip. Doug shares our love for adventure traveling and we loaded up the 4x4s for a camping trip in the Ocala National Forest, another beautiful Florida landscape, replacing coastal Palms with Florida scrub pines. Doug is in the process of downsizing his life to move into his truck as well. He will soon be joining the overlanding crew!

Doin’ what we do best

It’s not really camping till the guns come out.. Look at that form! Oo-RAH!

After Ocala, Lauren headed back to Tampa to hang out some more with the familia. They headed over to Busch Gardens for some fun with her sisters and nieces.

To really round our entire Florida tourist punch-card there was only one place left to go….

Who needs the PanAm? We got Mexico right here!

My best-bud Jack and I.  During our college years, We traveled and worked our way across the country for 9 months in an 87 Chevy Conversion Van. Built a bed and a kick ass stereo system in the back. We had a cooler full of beer and a dream to make it to Los Angeles, all you need for an ultimate life changing road-trip. Man… we shoulda never sold that van!

Unfortunately I didn’t get many pics of Orlando and missed out on lots of pics of my buddies. Huge Thanks to Kevin for helping me rig up the spare battery under the truck and thanks to Lauri for letting us crash at your house. Thanks to TrashCat for nothing!

One last stop before we could leave Florida. We headed down to Lake Placid to visit the place where all this rambling got into my bones…

Grandmas!

My grandma and grandpa (R.I.P.) would pile all of us kids, cousins, parents, pets and whoever was standing around at the time into this monster of a motorhome and take us on excursions all over the U.S when we were young. I have so many great memories as a kid cruising the highways and byways of this great nation, seeing tons of national parks, camping, and enjoying the adventure of the cruise. I do believe if it was not for this very motorhome I would not be the person I am today. I love you grandma and grandpa, thanks for providing us another window to the world.

We scooted up from Lake Placid to Atlanta to visit one of Laurens friends, Crystal, and check out the Atlanta Aquarium. Atlanta Aquarium is badass, they have a HUGE 8.6 million gallon tank. This gigantic tank houses over 250,000 fishes, including 4 giant Whale Sharks. The Atlanta Aquarium is the only aquarium in the US to house Whale Sharks. Crystal and Quentin’s new baby loved seeing all the fishes. Good seeing you guys!

I loved this quote on this bench “History is written by those who make the wake. Not by those who ride on it nor by those who watch safely from shore.”

Tried to steal one for you Michelle, they caught me smuggling it out in my jacket.

After Atlanta we started West again, Destination: Austin, TX. We camped a night or 2 along the way in some national forests in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Had to stop by a Drive-Through Daiquiri stand in Louisiana for some roadies.

I am typing this post from the back of the truck, currently parked INSIDE of Ruined Adventures house in Austin, TX. They have a badass warehouse/loft and we were able to pull our truck inside and now are camping in style. We have a long-list of loose ends to tie up but we should be heading south to Mexico here in a few days. FINALLY!

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching we had to step our game up. No more dilly dallying! We still have a few obligations to our parental units to uphold and one of them was Thanksgiving dinner in Florida. Unfortunately this means we had to pick up the pace from Colorado to Florida in order to hit our deadline. We missed a lot of great stuff and look forward to coming back someday to revisit lots of sites along the way. Luckily we had lots of friends along the way to stop in and crash for the night. Less camping shots on this post.

Heading out from Moab towards Colorado. We stopped off in Beaver Creek, CO to visit an old friend. Tommy is one of my dads best friends and basically an uncle to me and my brothers. It was great catching up with him and nice to get out of the cold for a bit. Tommy is a wild man, loves deep-sea diving, heli-skiing, dragracing, and basically raising hell. When I was younger he gave me my first job, let me get away with all my shenanigans, and was there to kick my ass when I needed it. A good guy indeed.

Beaver Creek, Nice little ski town. Still needs more snow to get pumping.

Fellow hellraisers

A little further up the mountain, Vail, CO had runs open and people skiing.

From Beaver Creek we stopped in Denver to see another old friend. We all call him Howie, I think his real name is Chris. But he has always been Howie to us. I met Howie back during my brief-stint with college. A lifetime friend and accomplice, how we got away with 1/2 the stuff we pulled I will never know. We stopped in unexpectedly and they were planning to go to a concert that night.

We tagged along planning to buy tickets and join them.

BOO! Sold out!

Oh well, old friends can still party down together; show or no show. We easily scalped his tickets. Howie and his girlfriend Courtney made a $50 profit! Headed across the street to imbibe for a bit….

Came back later to at least try to get a poster… and discovered the box office selling some last minute tickets for $20 a pop! SCORE!

Had a blast at the show, made some new friends at Howie’s local watering hole, had a Taylor Swift karaoke contest (Don’t ask!), and hit the hay.

Woke up hazy the next morning, headed over to the Red Rocks. Red Rocks is a naturally occurring amphitheater in the huge boulders/cliffs outside Denver. It is a beautiful place to see a concert, unfortunately they were closed for the season but you can still mill around the place and check it out.

Scooted down from Denver towards Texas. Stopped for the night and camped on some BLM land just outside of Great Sand Dunes National Park. Courtney had mentioned that we should come here and see the dunes.

Woke up in the AM and checked out the park. If I have not mentioned this yet, if you plan on visiting more than 2 or 3 National Parks a year it is definitely worth picking up an “America: The Beautiful” Annual Access pass. I have used this thing at least 20+ times this year, it is a one-time fee of $80 but it gets you into all National/Federal Parks/Monuments/Recreation/Seashore areas. I have saved around $300 in park fees so far this year by getting this pass. You can pick it up at any national park or order it online. It is a painless and quick process. Definitely worth it if you love our nations parks as much as we do.

Great Sand Dunes National Park contains the tallest sand dunes in North America. They have been swept down from the mountains across the San Luis Valley and pushed up against the edge of the Sangre De Cristo mountain range where they have grown and grown for ages.

Found a 4×4 road that took us along the backside of the dunes up into the mountain. Aside from Death Valley this is the only national park I have found that had legit 4×4 roads. We aired down and mashed around in the sand for a while.

After playing around in the sandbox we headed south again, down into New Mexico, camped out on some more BLM land somewhere near the Texas border. Caught a beautiful sunset then drifted off to sleep in the truck.

Eastbound and down, made it to TEXAS!

Lauren saw her first tumbleweed, it was a beast!

My grandfolks live in a small town near Grandbury, TX. My family has lived on this land since the civil war days. Stopped in for the night to say howdy. There are also lots of fossils and dinosaur artifacts in the area, we went to the state Dinosaur Park to check out some tracks.

Grandpa and I in front of the old stone house my grandma was born in. New roof upgrade obviously.

Dino footprint, unfortunately the river was muddy and we couldn’t see most of the prints. Still pretty cool.

We had to hike quite a bit to get out to the footprints through some pretty rugged terrain. My grandparents are almost 80 and did it with no sweat. Its true! Everything is tougher in Texas.  Love you guys!

Headed out from there, South bound. We could feel humidity starting to pick up in the air and finally started to shed some layers. Getting closer to home!!!

Stopped somewhere in Davey Crockett National Forest for night and caught another beautiful Texas sunset.

Woke among among the tall lanky southern pines of the forest. It got pretty humid overnite, rained a bit too. I have a big ol’ trucker fan that I need to hook up to help get a nice breeze going for these muggy nights.

Hit the highway, We were boogying now. Still decided to take the scenic route all through Southern Louisiana along the Gulf Coast. It had been almost 2 years since we have seen her waters.

Caught a ferry to get to the otherside of the canal, met a nice couple on the ferry who have traveled all around California to many of the same places we just came from. Was nice talking to you guys!

Things were starting to get familiar, spanish moss hangs lazily from swamp oaks.

This coastal drive was beautiful, we went through lots of little small towns which sadly had no remains of their original structures. Almost every single structure has been blown away in storms and replaced with mobile/prefabbed homes. I do admire the resilience of the people to return to the decimated area though.

“Cajun Highrise”

Stopped for the night with Lauren’s aunt in New Orleans, had some killer seafood for dinner and hung out with her soccer playing micro-dog, Daisy Deux

Headed out the next morning, cut to Alabama and drove down to Dauphine Island to take another coastal route along the Gulf Coast.

Caught another Ferry from Dauphine Island over to Gulf Shores.

Please make a U-Turn when possible!!

Pressing on through the night, we ran into a horrible thunderstorm, sheets of rain, and huge puddles. YEP, MUST BE…

Wow! We had a great response to our first post. I am glad you guys are enjoying our adventure. I know in our last post we said that the Sierras and Death Valley is some of the majestic scenery in all of the U.S. I think I need to keep my mouth shut because the past 7 days of traveling the “4 Corners” area of the U.S. has been AMAZING.

The Colorado Plateau is a geographic region of the U.S which covers over 130,000 sq miles of land shared between Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. This area has the greatest concentration of National Parks in the U.S and it is easy to see why. Developed over billions of years and uplifted and modified by faults and receding oceans this area is chock full of geological, ecological, and historical splendor. We had a blast.

Leaving Las Vegas!

Our night in Vegas was spent mostly holed up in our room enjoying the HEAT! and updating the blog. We did make it down for a few drinks and some midway games at Circus Circus

Lauren won a Rhino, He got some free drinks

Headed up to St. George, Utah and camped off some forest road.

Our first taste of red dirt

Snow Canyon State Park, St. George Utah

Since leaving the Bay, we have been having overheating issues, the thermostat on the truck has been malfunctioning. I had read about this “temperature overshoot” issue in the past happening with your standard Autozone thermostats and knew it was fixed by getting the expensive Toyota OEM dual-stage thermostat.

$45 later and 1/2 gallon of coolant onto the NAPA parking lot and we were fixed up, issue solved, no more overheating.

Off to the Grand Canyon! We read about a 90-mile backroad from St. George to a remote area of the Grand Canyon National Park called the “Toroweap Overlook”. Talked to a few people in town who said that it would be snowed and we would not be able to make it up and over the Mount Trumball pass. We’re used to naysayers and of course headed off anyway, the 4runner could make it.

Sunset on the Toroweap Rd.

Nightfall hit by the time we made up to the mountain pass, It was covered in snow and mud, I had a blast mashing through it all in 2 wheel drive, slipping and sliding all over the place and making a big ol’ mess of the truck.

Eventually made it to the campground, setup shop and went to sleep. Awoke in the morning completely alone and surrounded by the majesty of the red rocks and Grand Canyon.

Headed out on a hike to the Toroweap Overlook, no one around for miles but us and the canyon. No guardrails, no tourists, just the way we like it.

Played around in the Canyon for a while, then headed off again back to Utah. Headed to Zion National Park.

Spotted some Coyotes

We arrived in Zion in the middle of the night, awoke surrounded by huge canyon walls and beautiful CLEAR weather! Something we have been lacking most of the trip.

Spent most of the day hiking around Zion, then headed off to explore more of Southern Utah.

Headed to Bryce Canyon. Amazing Scenery of course.

Bryce Canyon was pretty well snowed out when we got there, Still checked it out.

Spent most of the time running out the overlook then back to the car, was about 30F outside at the time! Too cold for this Florida boy.

From Bryce we headed down another backroad towards Capitol Reef National Park, sun went down and we setup another freezing camp. Awoke in the morning to frost covering the truck once again and dreary cloud cover.

The beautiful dirt road through Capitol Reef made up for the weather. This is a great drive and there was no one out here but us. We enjoyed taking our time cruising through this beautiful place.

Eventually the dirt road led us to Glen Canyon National Recreation area, which is home to most of Lake Powell. Similar to Hetch Hetchy in the Sierras, a environmental tragedy took place here where we dammed up the Colorado River and flooded the majestic Glen Canyon to increase water supply to the surrounding area. The created reservoir was named Lake Powell after one of my heroes. John Wesley Powell, the one-armed civil war vet who was the first to explore the mighty Colorado River back in the 1800’s. A true adventurer and all around one-armed badass.

We hit the highway once again and headed towards the 4×4’er mecca. AKA MOAB, UTAH!

Got to Moab in the middle of the night, shacked up in a cheap motel. I thought I had heard some strange noises coming from our trash bag we had been carrying since Grand Canyon. Messed around for a bit with it and didn’t see anything, figured I was just crazy. Next morning Lauren is doing Yoga and hears the same noises coming from the bag. We snatched it up and dumped it into the bathtub to investigate.

HITCHHIKER!

Screaming like little girls and dancing around the room in our underwear trying to catch him but he ended up escaping somewhere in the motel room. Sorry Motel6!

Now that our adrenaline was pumping it was time to go beat on the truck some. We headed to the “Poison Spider 4×4 Trail” to try our luck and see how far we could make it. Lauren has never been 4wheeling before and was pretty much peeing her pants the entire time as we drove all over this place. The 4Runner with little 31 inch tires and open differentials is still a pretty capable machine.

After mashing around in Moab for most of the day we were headed up to Grand Junction, CO. An awesome guy from MarlinCrawler forums had offered to help us fix up a few issues with the truck that we did not have the tools or knowledge to tackle ourselves.

Drove around Colorado National Monument looking for a campspot, eventually found some dirt road that we took, kept getting higher and higher into the mountain. Eventually we were driving through deep snow in the middle of no where, figured we should turn around. Well the rear wheels dropped into a icy rut and we were stuck. 30 minutes of winching later we were turned around and headed back down the road. The Smittybuilt winch is no longer a virgin and it worked like a champ!

Next morning headed over to Phillip’s shop in Grand Junction. The shops name is Karnage Fabrication, Phillip knows Toyota’s like the back of his hand. He has owned over 50 of them and had ours torn apart and fixed back up in no time. This guy was a lifesaver, The Toyota community is an great group and I feel honored to have met such an awesome guy and his beautiful family. We replaced the oil pan cork gasket with the proper sealant, fixed up a leaky inner shat oil seal, and replaced the failing AUTO hubs with some beefy AISIN manual hubs. Thanks again Phil, you are our hero! And Thanks to Sean and Ace for grabbing some much needed parts. It was great to meet all of you!

Lauren and Phil’s daughter became bestest of friends.

4×4 Fabrication/Arts and Crafts. Karnage Fabrication has it all!

Headed off today for Vail to meet up with one of my dad’s old friends. Speaking of which… I should probably get on the horn and let him know were coming!

November 1st came and went, we were antsy to get going but the world had other plans. Luckily we only ended up two days behind “schedule”, which I am now declaring as a dirty word. Schedules are for people who have someplace to be.

Darren and Marc at Any7 got the truck all finished up, they did a great job putting our ideas for the truck into action. We picked it up and headed home to cram all worldly possessions into the back.

Thanks guys!

Once we got home the actual packing process only took about 30 minutes. Impressive! We bid our landlords and our cabin farewell and headed out the door. It was too late to actually make it anywhere and the truck was too full of crap to camp in the back. Darren let us crash on his couch for the night, the first of many couch surfing experience to come I am sure.

Re-arranged the back of the truck in the morning and hit the road. Our destination for the night was the Sierra mountains.

Excitedly we headed off into the rolling foothills of the Sierras.

The clouds looming overhead did not look very inviting, and as we approached the mountain range we saw signs stating the most of the mountain passes were closed. I thought this was odd since I was just up here last weekend and there wasn’t any snow on the ground. Cranked up the weather report on the radio…

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY – SNOW STORM APPROACHING EASTERN SIERRAS AT 730PM – 8 INCHES OF SNOW AND 75 MPH WINDS EXPECTED AT 8000FT.

Perfect, so pretty much exactly where we were heading? Looks like our “schedule” is about to change again. A quick look at the map and we decide we are going to go up and over the Sierra range and camp at a ghost town called Bodie on the eastern-side foothills. The storm was not scheduled to hit until 730, was only 430 at the time. We were about 2 hours from the other side. No problemo. We press on determined to beat the storm.

Not much time for pictures this visit to the Sierras.

Approaching 8000FT

Making good time, should make it easily before the storm hits. …until

What the hell!? Construction delays on the Carson pass! A bunch of bozos trying to build a road as the storm approaches, A long line of trucks idling waiting for the road to clear.  The white flakes starting to fall and winds picking up!

Eventually we make it over and haul ass down to Bodie as the storm picks up gusto. We find a side-road up in the hills and setup camp for the night as the storm set in. It’s going to be a cold one…

DAMN! 11F at 830AM, Had to have got down to 5F or so overnight

We awake to all the windows completely iced over, rear window and side windows frozen up, only way out of the truck is to move all the crap piled in the front back onto our bed and then climb out the front seats.

Iced over

She still started on first crank!

Froze our ass off trying to repack the truck in 11F weather, headed into town to grab a coffee then headed south. We wanted to check out the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Home to the oldest living things in the world.

Weather was still crappy but we knew if we waited any longer they would shut the road down (We have tried 3 times to get up here, every time it has been closed due to inclement weather/snowed out roads)

Road to nowhere?

The ancient bristlecone pines are only found in the highest elevations of the Inyo forest, from 8000-12000ft these beasts have lived for over 4000 years. Older than the next oldest living thing by over 1000 years! I had to see them!

Conditions worsening, 4Runner can take it. My buddy Jimbo gave me my first 4×4 lessons driving in a damn Sierra blizzard, I think I can handle a little powdering.

Made it!

Quick poses! too cold to hang around

Back to the truck and crank the damn heater up!

Drove back out of the park and camped on another backroad near the back entrance to Death Valley

Not a bad sight to wake up too.

Headed up the backroad into Saline Valley, Death Valley National Park

blech, cooties!

DV has some of the most breathtaking scenery in the U.S, the weather/light was crap most of the day so I couldn’t get very good pics.

Abandoned homestead

Stopped for some lunch, you can somewhat see our current “organization” system. Still a work in progress.

Saline Valley Rd.

Part of the old trolley system that carted salt from the Saline valley up and over the mountains to Bishop, CA. quite a feat in its day.

Driving down Saline Valleys dirt roads was a blast. The new OME suspension ate it up! I could haul ass now over every type of rock, pothole, dip, whatever. The suspension ate it up and asked for more. I am really happy with it, Thanks again to Any7 Offroad for putting it all together for us.

Riding down the road we came across a Toyota FJ60 broken down on the side of the road. Not being one to leave a fellow Toyota behind we pulled over to see what was up.

Hmmm… 20 year old spare didn’t cut the mustard in Death Valley?

Turns out these guys were from LA and were out here cruising for the weekend headed to the Hot springs. They caught a flat the day before and the spare blew out them just a mile down the road. They had been stuck there for about 24 hours now.

At least they had a nice view…

10 minutes with the plug kit and the punctured tire was repaired, took about another 3 hours wrestling with the jack and the stock sagged out springs to get the blown out spare off. Luckily they had beer, which is about all it takes to keep me around for 3 hours.

Stock spare off, not enough clearance to mount the fixed tire though.

Gotta air it down! Ladies… We need your butts.

With the tire aired down we were able to clear the lugs, get it bolted on and air it back up. Back on the road! Nice to meet you guys, Thanks for the goodies!

We set our separate ways and setup camp somewhere down in the valley.

Woke up in the morning, pack the truck up and headed out. Destination Las Vegas.

Joshua Trees in DV.

Lauren says this is where Dr. Seuss came to write his books, the truffala tree looks oddly similar to the Joshua Tree

Off out the valley, into Nevada.

Reason #1 why Nevada rocks! Was paying ~$4/gal in CA.

We are now lying in bed in a hotel in Las Vegas, couldn’t pass up the cheap deal and a hot shower! The adventure continues…